The way I see things. The Dabs and concentrates are dominating the market.

I believe that is the reason I see 28% THC at the dispensaries, two years ago that would be unheard of.

I am not in love with the idea of changing a natural substance into a chemically altered substance.

The Rise and meteoric like the growth of dabs and concentrates effects greatly the dry herb users and the Vaporizers.

Less Dry herb vapes will be on demand. As a result, there will be less of a need to produce them...

My view is that there will be more of hybrid units that either do concentrate equal to dry herb or hookahs. All in one is a keyword I would look out for.

I say this because. The Terra I had in my hands and it felt like a hookah/concentrate/ dry herb vape. The insert idea is great, hookahs require lots of Battery life. So this hybrid unit has a Dual 18650 replaceable batteries, that snap in and out in a snap. Interesting. It's quite big for it to be pocketable, its a walk around the unit (like a hookah) I would consider it in the future I would like to see how the Terra does in regard to reviews and customer feedback. So far I have heard people like the Terra and they are very popular and lots of sites and stores sell them very fast.

I believe smart companies will be smart to make solid multi-use vaporizers.

Is this why we haven't had any major changes from S & B?

Is this why S & B was bought out by a Canadian company? I think that the competition has caught up to The Crafty, The Mighty, The Plenty and Volcano. Nobody is throwing money into the air if it were profitable a company as big and successful as S & B would upgrade their line of dry herb vapes.

I would expect more mergers.

The future will be interesting. I am happy as long as Pax is putting out the quality dry herb vape's. That is made to withstand a ten-year warranty. As long as we got the base.

We need more G43 units to come out. Arizer has been a great company for dry herb vapes.

The MFLB was very awesome for its time, but now Magic Flight is focused on its concentrates units the Mua Dab. They haven't upgraded there Launch Box. They had a great debut, but now MFLB 2.

I think there will and is only a tiny market for dry herbs versus the world of concentrates. That will mean less dry herb vapes produced, and spur more multi-use vapes to be made.

Let's stick together brothers! Dry herb vapes as we have known it to be wont be the same.

My perception is we have not even hit real growth in the demand for flower vapes. Most consumers still combust. Most don't even know about flower vapes and would not know a Dyna from a Firefly. In this sense then, near everyone on this board is by definition an "outlier" early adopter.

Ditto with concentrates. Almost every friend I've turned on to Rosin, not only had never tried it before, but had never heard of such a thing -- putting weed into a heated press? People choose vaping over combusting for a variety of factors -- I myself personally choose it mostly because it tastes better.

I also notice a generational difference, and it is similar to that of music. I am convinced that MP3's and phones have ruined young people for music -- not the style of music they listen to but how it sounds and is recorded. They have no concept of high fidelity. As a musician, I find it sad. Likewise, most very young consumers seem to prefer carts and "e-juice". It's certainly become a problem at high schools... As a university prof, I can clearly tell some folks go to the bathroom and come back high.... they all like carts....lots of people have ONLY done carts.... never seen any weed... My daughter's best friend has NEVER consumed flower as flower, only carts. This is not that unusual apparently.
Oh, and they love Adderall (which has a black market price on campus of about $20/pill during finals week). lol

I am not sure vape consumers are looking mostly for "all-in-one" solutions. I believe it may be the opposite. Puffco Peak (dedicated dabbing appliance) is seriously outselling DR. Dabber Switch (all-in-one appliance) and they are close in price. Unless there is some technology advance (I used to have a phone AND a pda), I see people "specializing" with their devices. Most people want to do whatever they want to do well. Often, generally speaking, all in one solutions require sacrifices so that none of the "all" gets done very well. I can't think of one portable flower vape that does concentrates well.

I agree concentrates in general are a "creative destructor" (thank you Joseph Schumpeter) that could completely transform the new industry before it ever gets started. And it does effect flower "spot" markets as well, and if we are right and concentrates take over as it looks like they are, old-school flower users will have higher prices.

And then there are the literally millions of people who still view MJ as something evil, something from the devil, something unamerican. As I was taught as a kid, if you smoke weed you'll turn into a communist. I'm serious! :rofl:
Carts to many of these people are "not the same" as smoking weed. My oldest sister being one of them. She's going the way of my mom with way too many prescriptions, one countering the other, and so I turned her on to Stiiizy's.... yet she would not even try a tasty bowl from my FF2. "I told you I'm not going to smoke weed!!!!..."[while she smokes her cigs and inhales a Stiiizy)

As to S&B, they built a goldmine to a numbers guy like me. They did not come out with new products often because they built a money machine (new products are expensive) that boasted a track-record of stable recurring revenue over a long period of time. The brand had sustained high-margin cash flows for years, which created a high Present Value that made them very attractive.

I don't think there will be that many acquisitions, at least over the next few years. Mostly right now this is "small-time" If real legalization ever happens, and it isn't real until it is national, then we will see the gloves come off by the big boys, and folks will get their weed, concentrates, and devices from Amazon and Costco. When that day comes "Dyson" will probably be the top selling brand of vape, or perhaps Panasonic.

From a political-economy perspective, watch for the "big players" to advocate for more government regulation... got to stop all these garage "rogue vapes" being made.... they are not safe.... They will want massive additional fixed costs, in the name of protecting the public and children, because they can afford it and they know their little competitors can't.

a Dyson Vape?! :scream:
Oh man, bring it on! :rofl:
Seriously though, big business never does what's best for the customer just what will make $.
I think the real innovation will be done by people such as Bud, Ryan from RBT, John from Morwood, and so on. If you get tobacco involved in vaporizers it's all over. I will be growing my own and making my own vapes when that happens.

I think what @EconMan is touching on is the fact that the large corporations will be better positioned to take the industry from the hands of the smaller manufacturers you are mentioning. As the market for these vapes is growing, so is the risk level of users becoming injured because a battery blew or because the wiring shorted out and a user gets injured while attempting to troubleshoot. Any incidents of this kind can result in very expensive lawsuits. Just one lawsuit could put any of the small manufacturers out of business, this is not the case with a large corporation (Walmart, Target, Dyson, Canopy Growth, etc) that has the ability to recover from nearly any legal threat and also has the economic leverage to change/bend/lobby lawmakers in their favor. There’s many different directions this can go aside from what we might all favor, which is excellent product development from the small artisanal manufacturers we have come to admire.

Yeah I got that. I think what I was trying to say is that vaporizer quality will not be as good as what a small artisan vape maker can do. So when that time comes I hope the small guys are still around because I don't want to ever own a Walmart vape....

Being from a non-recreational state I can attest that the carts market is trash here. You never know what you are getting and the counterfeits are getting tougher and tougher to spot. I recently got a Brass Knuckles cart with packaging that was almost identical to an authentic one except that it was missing a very small “s” Where it read “Los Angele” on a very tiny part of the logo. The black market is the reason, I believe, that we are still encountering sub-par carts all over the place.

I have tried amazing carts in legal recreational states that will put me on my butt and leave me there for a few hours. When I have a good one I could easily use it to substitute flower for the whole day, the tough part is getting them to be legal everywhere. But, alas, with the corporate big buck$ lobbying for legal MJ like no other nowadays I get the feeling that cheap fake carts will be a thing of the past pretty soon.

They could make a space helmet that encompasses your entire head and creates a positive pressure to force the vapor into your lungs! You could infuse your entire head with sweet sticky icky! How do you think I get my hair to stand up like this? :joke:

I am a CPAP user (sleep apnea and snoring). I've actually toyed with the idea of connecting one of my desktop vapes to my CPAP machine. That way, I could inhale a trickle of CBD through the night while I sleep.

Still haven't figured out how to do it, and how that would affect my CPAP machine functionality, though.

I am not in love with the idea of changing a natural substance into a chemically altered substance. — Bruce

Me neither and here's my personal reason why, more exactly: our noble cannabinoïds already get packed in a convenient NATURAL format where the goodies are being effectively filtered at the site of genesis on a molecular basis, it's called the trichome and falls off quite easily under sufficiently cold conditions... In addition i've learned to seek the "Shortest Path of Least Transformation" in order to remove/limit all self-vilifying features whenever possible; i'm thinking of a "CHEAT" element not directly related to trichomes as it emanates from the less specialized vegetal structures only containing precursors, not to mention potential systemic pesticides, etc. (...), yet still boosting a final cloud as if that was all good. Which is how i came to adopt/develop a "Micro-Bursting" consumption method targeting contact surfaces instead, while slow/thermostatic "Hot Dry Air Ovenizers" failing to provide Inlet Water actually hurt aroma/taste appreciation" IMO. In comparison i find more rational to match a finite "Heat Charge" ranging above a hundred joules (i think) to its associated cannabic workload in the bowl. This results in a "1-Hitter" mode where intervals between inhalations only contribute to "conservation" by reducing exposure to a "Baking" effect, thanks to a "solid-state" (no moving parts) heat valve that behaves much like a thermal barrier in absence of airflow, or a heat source during movement of my "Release/Transport Agent", preferably "Potentiated" with Inlet Water captured from a clean-burning butane torch flame. Etc.

In terms of ritual i'd welcome "Bio-FeedBack" based tablet/phone applications, even karaoke-style competition games showing participant's inhalation performance in real-time, or as training tools intended to accelerate the acquisition of operator skills based on "expert" sample signatures. Someday.

All these "boutique shops" lack economies of scale and operate on the inelastic portion of demand, so price is not the major driver. The sort of person who thinks (most of demand right now) "the money you spent on your FF2 could have bought me two ounces of flower..." is NOT even in the demand function for high-end upscale market vapes.

Often these little companies are started by "inventors" who don't know much about actual commerce. They do things like offer lifetime warranties (almost always correlated with business failure), fail to adequately factor into their price "bureaucratic expenses" like insurance, independent lab testing, and the BIG one.... the REAL cost of support.

So a Black and Decker vape line would be hard to compete against once sales go from being measured in thousands to millions. A vape somewhere will blow up in someone's face, or a teenager gets killed in an accident while vaping... etc... some sort of "trigger" would be used by a BIG company like B&D to start lobbying congress to impose "controls" on the industry "to protect the people".
This is what Joseph Schumpeter was referring to in his famous quote:"The true pacemakers of socialism were not the Marxists and social malcontents who preached it, but rather the Carnegies, Mellons, and Rockefellers who practiced it."

Legalization will have its discontents, especially among us old people who have "good ol days" to remember. :nerd:

@Baron23 shared a thread from FC on the "Hexnail company, that just blew my mind. No case study in any econ or business book rivals this in showcasing all the stages of failure. So much so I'm going to use the entire thread as a case study next semester. It FULLY encapsulates what I'm speaking of. To an economist, the thread is like watching a suspense thriller.... Hype, promises, more promises to fix broken promises.... supports costs... production issues, angry customers, allegations of fraud, drama, drama, drama, make a deal with the devil, lose your company -- all because of an obviously totally failed project management. Eventually, any resident illusions they were in control of their destiny exploded and they just faded away, leaving lots of folks apparently with a "WTF just happened" sort of moment. It is one thing to make and sustain a device that works properly. It is more difficult to make 10 that work properly. A mammoth endeavor of management planning to get 1000 to work properly.
When I saw the "insides" of what was eventually shipped, I was stunned, and wondered how even 2 could be working.

Great write up, I learned a lot. Thank you.
I don't multi-use vapes. right now The Terra that I checked out in the store is exciting even though I don't do concentrates the unit is really made well and is in high demand.

In my opinion, even I am in a very small minority to really not like dabs. I believe concentrates can ruin a good thing. When the entire country has recreational MJ, concentrates to me kind of it makes it into a drug. First of all, if you don't have a press it's really hard to find. Dispensaries aren't stocking them.

I say that concentrate is like a drug and anything but natural about is gone. Unless you have a press. Butane made no thanks. I was very moody and had to have it. I completely had swollen glands (typical) I was immune to dry leaf because of the concentrates are very powerful.

Bruce: I, too, am not a big fan of solvent-produced concentrates either. They lose the entourage benefits of the terpenes (ocimene and beta caryophyllene are my good friends!) Not to mention: solvents introduce trace compounds that are undesirable at best.

I think the value of cartridge concentrates lies in three areas:

1. when the user has high tolerance for THC (e.g. long-term medical user)
2. on-the-go convenience (e.g. disposable cartridge pen for a music festival or a day of skiing)
3. profiting off trendy casual users who can't be bothered with learning cannabis science

But.... I'm thinking about grabbing a stizzy or refillable tank to carry around my neck like a tool — McNuggetsTrip

Stiiizys, real Stiiizys, are pretty strong. You'll know a real one because it actually tastes great, and they all have high THC in the 70-85% range. Two full sequential hits on a Stiiizy is a small dab level high.
They have become popular at the upscale highschool near me where 16 year olds drive new corvettes and BMW's. Problem is many of these these young kids are starting out with very strong doses, and they can't handle it, and "cases" are already popping up. And guess who the rich helicopter parents blame.... not their little beloved lightweight Johnny who can't handle his concentrates. No! They blame legalization which is destroying our children by making harmful drugs more easily available to them..... I'm already hearing it in local politics.

If legalization stalls, or is reversed, the culprit will be concentrates, not basic flower itself. This is why it is so darn hard to get a card Merchant Account for cannabis - the banks KNOW there is going to be a backlash.... they don't know when and where, but they know there will be one, and none of them wants to be holding the "bill" for the trainwreck.

I agree with what you said. All of it. I do want to point out that water is technically a solvent. I personally don't care if something is solventless or not, but more so that whatever process is chosen, is done well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with BHO/PHO processing **IF** it is done conscientiously well. The high quality extracts from the legal states are coming in with exceptionally low numbers with respect to ppm's of various particulates. Indeed, there is more butane in your whipped cream than in your well-made shatter.

It's absolutely not a fad. It represents an ongoing evolution in "getting high" -- economy, convenience, potency, divisibility. I remember being amazed at how much higher I got with this thing called a "bong" than with joints. We would buy BIG bongs with BIG bowls so our BIG lungs would take in BIG hits so we would get BIG thc. We wanted to get "higher". Just look at the chatter around vapes... "which one will give me killer hits...which one will get me lit the best....?" Then there was hash, blunts, spotting, all sorts of "innovations".

If I was on a budget and using MJ for pain, I would press my own and Dab rosin.... I consume less because the urge to do more is less... I don't want another hit for some time. Dabbing facilitates me reaching the marginal levels of self-medication intensity I've desired for decades, yet was denied and left me sucking on a bong too many times. :nerd:

Regarding "withdrawals", the word has some specificity (physical) and I'm exceptionally skeptical that anyone experiences bona fide withdrawal phenomena from flower. Emotional dependence? Certainly, but then that can be experienced with near anything.

If one is using mj for pain when you stop the pain returns and you are miserable. I find it's not so much a withdrawal as a return of symptoms.

As to dabs yes they have a place and I really enjoy the new carts I am getting and their flavors. The convenience of one ten second hit having a stronger effect than a 10 minutes session is amazing. Especially if you are somewhere where you can't do a 10 minute session.

I just used pain for a reference but I'm sure other symptoms can relate.

I think Dry herb Vaporizers will explode in popularity in the next 5 years. The reason being with Marijuana becoming legal and more acceptable more people and conisuors that enjoy taste will prefer the plant. Most of the people that enjoy fine wine and foodies will prefer it. The concentrates are more popular right now because it's mostly people that have used for a long time, have high tolerances and have been using in the shadows of the black market most of there lives. Or there school kids trying to hide and conceal which is why the Jewel is so popular with them.

Once its fully legal everywhere you'll see people wanting to explore the different strains and want to look at them, touch and smell them. Taste them in there full flavor natural form. And medical patients that micro dose through the entire day like myself also prefer the dry herb flower. IMO the dry herb vaporizers haven't even got started yet.